Ms Caron McCaffrey:

I will take the last two questions and then ask my colleague to respond. Between 8% and 10% of people who come into custody are homeless. Many have very complex and challenging lives and a combination of needs around mental illness and addiction.

One of the recommendations in the health assessment I mentioned earlier is setting up a dual diagnosis service within our service to deal with people who have both a mental illness and an addiction. This is important and is something we are looking forward to implementing.

Regarding data, much work has been done in the Irish Prison Service over the past three years in developing a data analytics model to allow us to collect data from all of our systems. While we have lots of data on lots of systems, it is hard to extract the data and join it up. We have a very sophisticated model which is about to go live. This will collect data from all of our systems. Our health-based system needs to be upgraded to allow us to do that. The information might be there but it is in somebody's individual case notes and it is very difficult to pull it out. If we cannot pull it out to examine the data and see the trends, then how can we ensure that the service provision is right and how we can we plan for the future? There is quite a lot of work going on in this area.

A really good point was made about people who have a diagnosis and would get a service and what the impact is regarding their reoffending. We are working with Senator Ruane at the moment on a really exciting piece of work. This is for newly committed 18 to 24-year-olds who come into custody. The aim is to work with the psychology service of Trinity College Dublin, TCD. All of these people would have an assessment in relation to neurodiversity. All their needs would be determined. We will commit to putting resources in place in a custodial setting. However, the really important point is that when they go back to their communities, they will have a key worker. This worker would help them and give them the support they need in the community to allow them to access the services they need. This type of approach would have huge impact on reoffending rates. When people are in our custody, they often have a lot of support, including psychologists, a healthcare team, friends and peer support. When they go back to the community, those supports may not exist in the same holistic manner. They are very vulnerable and some of them have led very chaotic lives. It is not enough for somebody to be released; they need to have the key worker model. This is a really exciting development and the aim is to collect data over time on elements like the number of people who are first diagnosed in a custodial setting but more importantly, ensuring that if they have the resources in place in the community that will undoubtedly have an impact on them not reoffending.